of women's ashes next the door, i. e., the last stone closed; the reason of which is that in Khasi-land the woman is always mistress of the house. The quantity of ashes altogether is very small. Each occasion of collection of family ashes is accompanied by a grand family feast, which is mainly of pig. No bones of pig could by any chance get inside the kist; that would be horror. The stones forming the kist fit as closely as a Khasi can conveniently make them; a mouse might, however, generally get in. In the neck of each earthen jar of ashes a close-fitting stone is placed so that no animal could get at the ashes within; but this, of course, does not fit by any means air-tight, and the damp of the climate affects the ashes so much that on re-opening the kists after even a few years, for the purpose of agglomerating the family ashes, it frequently happens that no trace of ashes is found in the earthen jars. In the descriptions of the Khasi stone monuments hitherto published, these numerous kists appear often overlooked or confounded with the horizontal monumental slab. The kists differ entirely in their object and meaning, and in being closed. So long as they contain earthen jars they cannot be mistaken; but by the continual collection of family ashes the majority of the square kists are left with one side broken down and empty, and in such a state it is sometimes impossible to determine whether the horizontal slab be a monument or the lid of an old kist, unless a family can be found to claim it as their monument. Where there are no upright monumental stones near I incline to suppose that a large majority of these doubtful remains are kists and not monuments. 6. THE MONUMENTAL GROUPS.-There are two general types of monumental stones, viz., the upright slab and the horizontal slab. The upright slabs are commonly grouped in threes or fives (sometimes they are seven or more); they are nearly always oblong and set up in a row with the tallest stone in the middle; annexed is a representation of a common type containing five stones. A common height for the middle stone of such a monument will be six to ten feet, by 2-3 feet wide. The stones are sunk not very deep, say 1-2 feet, into the earth; great numbers of fallen stones are seen. Monuments of this character are often placed on the crest of the hills, and in many parts of Khasiland the landscape appears dotted over with them. The horizontal slabs are commonly grouped in pairs. The flat slabs may be 5-10 feet long, and are rarely so exactly quadrangular, and they generally have some of the corners irregularly rounded off, and thus pass into the oval or round horizontal slab, which is also a frequent type. The upright and horizontal slabs are often combined to form a single monument, and perhaps the commonest of all the combinations is that in which five upright slabs have two horizontal before them. The combinations adopted are, however, endless in variety. In these combinations it must be understood that the whole group of stones forms one indivisible monument, which may be the monument of one individual, a household, or a family. Families retain a history of the monuments which belong to the family, and thus in a small degree of the names of their ancestors. Such family monuments may be repaired, added to, or rebuilt from time to time. They are not necessarily placed where the family ashes are kept in kists, or near such kists; but they are usually at no great distance from the village where the family dwells. The putting up a large stone, say one that stands fifteen feet out of the ground, is a very costly matter, and the monuments of the first class in size in the Khasi country are not very numerous; in the monuments of small stones, the number of stones is often great, I have noticed twenty-one stones in a row, no stone exceeding two feet high. The upright slabs are (particularly when unaccompanied by any horizontal slabs) usually placed in a straight line. But frequently, where the horizontal slab is round, the upright slabs stand in the arc of a circle, and sometimes the upright slabs are placed in a curved line apparently by accident, or because the nature of the steep ground suggested such an arrangement. Two such monuments occur on the main road to Lailankote. Major Godwin-Austen states in his article on the subject that the upright slabs always stand in threes, fives, sevens, etc. This is a mistake; to have the number of stones unequal, with the central slab the tallest, is perhaps the plan adopted in forty-nine monuments out of fifty; but among the vast variety of monuments in these hills a dozen monuments on the binary type may soon be found in which there are two equal upright slabs in the middle, and the other stones placed symmetrically on each side of them. 7. There are three kinds of rock employed by the Khasis for stone monuments, viz. : a. The Cherra sandstones. b. The Shillong sandstones. Small stones are conveyed considerable distances from the place of manufacture before they are set up-large stones are not-hence the material of the monuments is determined everywhere geologically. a. The Cherra sandstones are tertiary and cretaceous rocks spread along the southern edge of the plateau and producing the ledges which mark its abrupt termination. In the great thickness of these sandstones are many beds in which the rock occurs in large sheets with very few joints, and well-adapted for working out large slabs therefrom. The sandstone is generally very hard, but not so hard but that the Khasis can work it with their own native-made iron tools. There is a quarry, now in full work, about half-a-mile out of the old Cherra cantonment, upon the Mamloo path, where slabs may be seen in preparation. The slabs made from the Cherra sandstones, admitting of being worked, are generally hewn pretty fairly to a shape and smoothed before being set up. The ancient monuments are, however, often made of very rough slabs. All the well-known monuments near the old Cherra station are made of these sandstones, as also the large monuments at Mamloo, Mausmai, and Lirinow. These three monuments all stand on sheets of Cherra sandstone and the stones were cut out of the rock hard by where they now stand. The stones quarried now outside the Cherra cantonment, being for transport, are none of great size. The Khasis also work gigantic slabs of stone for bridges. Where the span is anything under twenty feet a single slab four or five feet wide and two feet thick is thrown across; piers of enormous blocks of sandstone are raised on each side, on which the slab may rest, if there is the remotest fear that the water can, in any flood, reach the under surface of the slab. As compared with such a bridge the Khasis regard the best efforts of the English engineers as mere makeshifts. The arch at Amwee figured by Dr. Hooker is Bengali work. b. The Shillong sandstones extend over a large area of the northern portion of the plateau: they are often more argillaceous (sometimes slaty) than the Cherra sandstones, and are geologically ancient, probably being of paleozoic age, but containing no fossils. They are generally inclined at high angles and the beds are full of joints, and do not admit of large slabs being got out of them. I know of no monument of the first class made out of Shillong rocks, but slabs of six feet high are very common. They are generally obtained by splitting out with wooden wedges and are not often finished with iron tools. The monuments on the Shillong sandstone area are therefore of a much rougher character than the Cherra monuments, the stones irregular in shape, and the stones that should correspond in size only corresponding very roughly. It is often very difficult to say whether these monuments are of the regular 3-5-7 stoned type or not, but they all are designed in general accord with the two great types of upright and horizontal slabs. c. A large area, perhaps 1,000 square miles, of the Shillong plateau, is covered with scattered blocks of granite, varying in size up to masses as large as cottages: perhaps the Kollong rock itself (figured by Hooker) might be counted as the extreme size such blocks here reach. This granite area runs east and west through the centre (or somewhat through the northern half) of the plateau. It is of great width and continuity westward, becomes broken into isolated areas in the centre of the hills, and becomes very narrow in the Jaintea territory, finally dying out in East Jaintea, according to the Khasis, who are good geologists. These granite blocks are found on the steep hill sides and on the hill tops, the valleys between being often entirely destitute of them. The highest hills of the plateau are especially favoured with them as Nonglas (Nunklow) and Laitlankote. On the edges of the granite area and on the isolated peaks of the country, outlying heaps of granite blocks are found. Around Jowye (the Jaintea capital), the country is very uniformly at a level of about 4000-4500 feet above the sea, and not a granite block is to be seen there, nor in marching east thence, where you keep at the same level, until you reach the Ralliang hill about twelve miles east of Jowye, where the blocks appear again in full force all over the summit of the hill. From these granite blocks, slabs of almost any size might be obtained, but the Khasi native iron tools will not work this granite, which is very hard, and the granite slabs used in the Khasi monuments are merely flakes obtained by heating the block with fire along a line and then pouring cold water upon it. The upright granite slabs thus frequently exhibit one convex and one concave face, as also do the horizontal slabs which are round or oval, not quadrangular. The flakes are entirely unworked in the Khasi territory, so that the granite monuments have an extreme rudeness and ruggedness about them which has been commonly supposed to indicate extreme antiquity. This I believe is altogether a mistake, but at the present time the taste of the people appears educated up to a preference for worked stones, and I have not seen any granite monument in process of construction, though I am told that many have been made within the memory of man. There is an important difference in the Jaintea granitic monuments which are neatly worked to the approved form. The Bengali Rajahs of the plains, Jaintea and Jainteapore, have long established an influence in the hills, and Bengali workmen have thus penetrated the hills from Jainteapore by Amwee up to Jowye, the hill capital, and further. The Bengali tools are able to fashion this hard granite, and the gigantic slabs, whether used for monuments or for bridges, are commonly found neatly hewn, all the way from Jainteapore up to Nartiung, north of Jowye. Large granite stones are rather more difficult to move than sandstones of the same dimensions, and the first class granite monuments are found on the spot where the granite blocks abound. Where an isolated hill was covered with large blocks, and no blocks were seen anywhere else near, this seems at once to have suggested such a hill as a suitable spot for monumental erections. In just the same way at Stonehenge the large stones |